How To Improve Any Team With Ego Management And Silence

0:00It's time for Cyber Monday, Dell Technologies biggest sale of the year. That's right, you'll find the lowest prices of the year on select Dell PCs like the Dell 16 Plus with Intel Core Ultra processors. And with built-in advanced AI features, it's the PC that helps you do more faster. From smarter multitasking to extended battery life, these PCs get the busy work done so you can focus on what matters most to you. Plus, you can earn Dell rewards and join many other benefits like free shipping, expert support, price match guarantee, and flexible financing options. They also have the biggest deals on accessories that pair perfectly with your Dell PC, improving the way you work, play, and connect.

0:38Whether you just got started holiday shopping or you're finishing up, these PCs and accessories make perfect gifts for everyone on your list. Shop now at dell.com slash deals and don't miss out on the best prices of the year. That's dell.com slash deals. I got an amazing night's sleep last night. One, because my six-year-old fell asleep in the car at like six o 'clock and he transferred him from the car seat to the bed and it stuck, which is just magic. So he's in bed way earlier than normal. But I sleep really well every night because I have a Eight Sleep Pod 5 Ultra, which is Eight Sleep's best product.

1:18I've used Eight Sleep for many years now and it's just totally transformed how I sleep, made me sleep better, made my wife sleep better. It's amazing. So basically, Eight Sleep is this topper that goes over your mattress. It can heat and cool both sides separately. It can raise and lower each side separately. So it helps you fall asleep faster, stay asleep, and then wake up better. Eight Sleep buzzes me to wake gently every morning as opposed to some loud blaring alarm. And then I can check the app and it tells me my sleep score. It even helps me optimize my day based on how I slept. If you want to survive the holidays like a pro and just generally sleep better, head over to 8sleep.com slash Daily Stoic and use code Daily Stoic to get$350 off your very own Pod 5 Ultra.

2:09The best part is you still get 30 days to try it at home and return it if you don't like it. But I know you will. Trust me, your body will thank you for this investment in better sleep, shipping to many countries worldwide. See details at 8sleep.com slash Daily Stoic.

2:27Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

3:10Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. This was back in May. I was flying, trying to get to Knoxville, Tennessee. I was supposed to land in Nashville and drive a couple hours to Knoxville. Ended up being crazy weather. We circled for like an hour, ended up landing in Memphis. Then we were supposed to wait a bunch of time to then get on a flight. And I was like, you know what? I don't trust it. I don't think it's going to happen. I called my speaking agent. I said, just give me a rental car. I'm going to drive. I drove like six hours in the same storm and made it at like two in the morning.

3:49to Knoxville. And then I got up early that day. I went for a run and then I went over and I talked to the entire Tennessee athletic department about the connection between stoicism and sports. There were tennis coaches there. The head football coach was there. The swimming coach was there. Admissions officers, a whole bunch of people in the athletics department were all there as part of a coach's retreat, which I wanted to bring to you in today's episode. So enjoy. it. Thank you very much. When we think about ego, the problem is ego makes everything about us. It makes us about what we want, how we want things to go, the credit we deserve, what we're trying to do.

4:31But we have to understand, as Kyrie seems to fail to do, that life is a team sport, right? Even the solo sports are a team sport because you couldn't get there without other people, couldn't get there without the university, you couldn't get there without your parents, who couldn't get out there without your spouses, right? We're all part of this team. And when we sublimate ego and we think about what's best, not just for us, but for the organization, this is a helpful curb on that destructive ego. And also understanding that seeking out credit, seeking out attention is usually a sort of a creative death sentence or a death sentence for improvement and growth.

5:10This is Michelle Howard. She was the first four-star admiral in the U.S. Navy. These bars on her shoulders were four stars. They actually did not make this for women when she got her fourth star. She had to get them specially made. She's the first one to do it. I'm guessing most of you have not heard of this person. Who here has seen the movie Captain Phillips? Right? Great movie. We all know the Navy SEALs do it. She's the one that gives the order for the Navy SEALs to take out the pirates who have kidnapped Captain Phillips. There's movies about it. There's books about it. There's story after story.

5:47She could have been at the forefront, the subject of all of these stories, but she isn't. She constantly eschews the spotlight. She could have written a book about herself. She could have started a leadership company. She could have done all this stuff. She's someone who does her job, who focuses on what she's trying to accomplish and doesn't really care about anything else, which is what's allowed her to be so successful, to get so much done. An admiral named James Stavridis talks about this in one of his great books. He's saying, but if the order had gone badly, if the operation had gone badly, everyone would know who this was, right?

6:24But she doesn't seek attention. She doesn't seek the spotlight. She seeks getting things done, which is why ego is actually such a problem. Ego puts us in competition with other people. humility or confidence or self-sufficiency allows us to get things done without being in opposition to other people. This is the great George Marshall, who paradoxically people know for the Marshall Plan, but actually the reason it's called the Marshall Plan is a great example of this. Truman, President Truman, realizes that he is very, very unpopular, and he says, if I call this the Truman Plan, it will not pass.

7:00Marshall is mortified that it's called the Marshall Plan, but he agrees to lend his name to it because it gives it a chance of passing. And the reason his name gives itself, gives it the stamp of approval is that the reputation in Washington was never does Marshall think of himself. Marshall was a man of unflinching honesty, of no ego, of always putting the country first. And so when his name is on it, when he has to go to Congress and say, I need billions of dollars to give away to other countries, in some cases our former enemies, Congress said, sure, right? Even though it was a Republican Congress facing a Democratic administration, they trust Marshall.

7:42And one of the reasons they trust Marshall is a gesture he makes during the war. Marshall is chief of staff. He is the planner. He is the one who's giving everyone else the battle assignments, whether they win glory or fame or in some backwater posting, this is all on Marshall. And FDR calls Marshall into his office and he goes, look, nobody knows who the chief of staff for the U.S. Army was during the U.S. Civil War. It's actually Henry Halleck. But nobody knows who that is. And he says, I understand that a general's reputation is made by what they do in battle. And so the biggest command of the war is now upon us.

8:22Who will command the Allied invasion of Europe, right? The invasion of Normandy? Who is going to be the supreme allied commander? And he says, the job is yours if you want it more than anyone else you have earned it. And so Marshall thinks about it and he goes, you know what? I don't want you to take my personal feelings into account as you decide who to give this job to. Give it to whom you think is best. And FDR thinks about it and he goes, I know this is going to crush you, but I want to give it to Eisenhower. He says, I can't afford to lose you. They have this great working relationship in Washington.

8:58He doesn't want to send Marshall all the way overseas and lose their day-to-day contact. And Marshall accepts this, right? And it might have been a little bit of a bitter pill because Eisenhower is his protege. This is the job that propels Eisenhower to the presidency, seals his fate as one of the great generals of all time. And Marshall is effectively dooming himself to obscurity as he makes this decision. And this is a little memo. I know it's hard to see. But this memo is after FDR says, give the job to Eisenhower. Marshall writes out the order. And then in the moment when he is giving the command, the job of a lifetime to someone other than him, because it's right for the country, because it's the right thing to do, because it increases their chances of success, what Marshall is thinking about is how Eisenhower is going to be thinking about this.

9:47He's not crushed. He's not crying. He's not privately seething. He says, dear Ike, I thought you might like to keep this order as a memento. And he sends it to him for his personal records. In this moment, Marshall is not only thinking of the country first, but he's thinking of his protege who is now leapfrogging above him. And like in sports, we're measured not just by how much we win, but by our coaching tree, Who are the other coaches that we have influenced? What do our players go on to do? I can see the list there, right? It's not just how many titles you win or conference titles or bowl games, but it's what do your athletes go on to do?

10:29What do the coaches who started in your program go on to do? I think Greg Popovich, for this reason, is not just one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time, but has the greatest coaching tree probably in the history of sports, right? The coaches that he's given breaks to, who he's incubated, who he's taught, the impact that he's had on the game. And what I think is interesting about Popovich, just as it is with Marshall, is that these coaches are not mirror images of Greg Popovich. There's a big difference between Steve Kerr and Mike Brown. There's a big difference between the types of players he's had in his program.

11:02But what he's built is an incredible coaching tree. And that's how Marshall thought about it. Marshall kept a little black book with him throughout the course of his career, starting from the very beginning. And when he identified people of talent or promise, he would write their name down in this book and he would spend incredible amounts of time and energy trying to advance their career. Omar Bradley, Dwight Eisenhower, these are people he discovers, he promotes, he makes into, in some cases, people who are more famous and more important than he is. And I know we have this fear that if we put others' interests in front of our front of ours, if we're team players rather than, you know, fighting for our own career, if we don't leap at every opportunity for promotion or advancement or attention, we'll get left behind.

11:50Marshall has a simple funeral. He wants to be buried like an ordinary soldier, he says, but his tombstone kind of says it all. This is his tombstone. It says, Marshall, chief of staff of the U.S. Army, right, the most important part time in American history, secretary of state, president of the American Red Cross, secretary of defense. Pretty good run, right? Pretty good resume. And the point is, actually, by doing the right thing, by not thinking of ourselves first, we develop the reputation, we develop the trust, we develop the credibility that Marshall has that allows him in moments like going before Congress and saying, hey, I need millions of dollars for this thing we're calling the Manhattan Project.

12:30I can't tell you what it's for. You'll never see the results. It might be a complete and total waste of time. And Congress says, yes, when he asked for the Marshall Plan, it's the same thing, right? By not being driven by ego, but by being driven something bigger than ego, team, organization, country, et cetera, he's able to actually accomplish far more. And so if we think about the secret to humility, it's not just the team. It's not just some principle or cause. I think it's also understanding that we're not perfect, that we can always be getting better. I think you see this in martial arts.

13:07If you walk into a martial arts gym, the humblest, kindest, most interesting person to talk to is the one with the highest belt. They're the ones that's going to make you the most comfortable. They're the one you need to worry about the least, right? Because they have dedicated themselves to the craft of getting better at that thing rather than lording their success over other people. Stokes would say that we have to always stay a student. We have to always focus on what we can learn. Epictetus would say, remember, it's impossible to learn that which you think you already know. This is the problem with ego.

13:39Ego says, I'm perfect. Ego says, I know everything. And in that sense, you do know everything it is possible for you to know, right? If you think you know everything, it becomes impossible for you to learn anything else. Socrates, who I mentioned earlier, his key to knowledge and wisdom was his understanding of what he didn't know. He was interested in learning what he didn't know, not telling people what he did know. John Wheeler, a great physicist, actually part of the invention of the hydrogen bomb, he would say that as our island of knowledge grows, so does the shoreline of ignorance. So as we get better, as we learn more, as we do this longer, in some cases we actually become less confident in a good way, right?

14:24Because we're exposed to all the things that we're not yet good at, that we can learn, all the little different elements, all the parts that remain for us to study and begin to understand. Emerson would say that everyone is better than us at something, and that's what we want to focus on, what we can learn from them. And so the Stoics try to stay students always. There's a story about Marcus Aurelius. He's this old man. He's seen leaving the palace in Rome. And a friend asks him where he's going, and he says, I'm off to see Sextus the philosopher to learn that which I do not yet know. And the man marvels that this is the most powerful, wisest man in the world.

15:00He says, taking up his tablets and going to school. All of you work with student athletes, but how many of those student athletes would see you as a kind of student coach that would see you continuing your education, see you continuing to learn, to add new elements to your game, to your understanding of leadership? And we have to model this. The MMA fighter, Frank Shamrock, has this idea. He says, there's a plus, minus, and equal. You have to have the minus. These are the players that you're coaching, the younger coaches that are under you. That's who you're teaching. He says the plus, that's who you are learning from.

15:35That's who you are still apprenticing under. That's who your mentors are. And then equal, these are your peers who you're meeting with, challenging each other, competing with each other. And this plus, minus, equal creates a sort of holistic environment that It pushes ego down and allows you to come better. And the Stoics would say we learn as we teach, right? As we are studying, as the words are coming out of our mouth, we're reminded of what we believe, of what we've studied. And then we never arrive. Mastery is like the horizon. It gets a little bit further from us the closer we get to it. It's a perfection and asymptote that we never actually touch, although we get closer and closer to it as we go.

16:21Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Bastro County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

17:07We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course. Because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you, discover your uncharted territory.

17:48Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours.

17:58And then the final thing I wanted to talk about is this idea of stillness. Stillness being an idea that appears in almost all religious, spiritual, and philosophical traditions. It's one of those words that you don't know exactly what it means. It's hard to perfectly express. And yet when we hear it, we feel it. It touches something on us. This idea of stillness, of calmness, of being still as the world spins faster and faster around you, slowing things down. The even keel. The Stoic tries to get not too high, not too low. Mark Shrillis talks about being like the rock that the waves crash over and eventually the sea falls still around.

18:41When we think of stoicism, it tends to mean to people lowercase stoicism or has no emotions robotic. That's not what stoicism is. It's not that you don't have the emotion. It's that you're able to sit with the emotion, not be ruled by the emotion, overwhelmed by the emotion. It's the difference between being angry and doing something out of anger. it's not emotionlessness but it is less emotion particularly in the big moments Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was once asked to describe John Wooden in a single word and he said dispassionate which I think so perfectly captures both of them John Wooden of course cared deeply about winning he was deeply competitive he was passionate about the game but on the sidelines he was calm and cool and collected He said, sometimes when they would go out on the field, he'd go, I've done my job.

19:33He's like, I've done everything that I can. Me ranting and raving on the sideline does not help anyone. Usually it gives points to the other team in basketball. You think about a technical or in football, it's giving yards, whatever it is. Not having control of yourself usually works to the advantage of the opponent and not to your team. Throwing the chair, famously. This is not an example of stoicism. I hate this picture so much. When you are attempting to physically intimidate a child or a kid to get your point across, you fucked up, right? You've done it wrong. This isn't how we want to comport ourselves.

20:12This isn't the model of control. We would never like seeing it with other people. The Stokes would talk about, look at someone else being really angry, right? You're at the airport with your kids and you see some parents struggling, getting really upset with your kids and you go, what are they doing? Don't they know people are watching? And then you turn around and get mad at your kids and you think it's different. It's not different. It's never a good look. You never are glad that you lost your temper. The Stokes would say the whole point of the philosophy is to be able to look at things in the calm light of mild philosophy.

20:46The next day, later, down the road, we're going to have distance and perspective from this thing, and we're going to be able to see it differently. The key is to get closer to that in the moment um general james mattis who famously carries mark's releases meditations with him everywhere he goes over his 40 years years of deployments he would say the single biggest problem of leaders in the information age is a lack of space of reflection they're always responding responding responding and i know i said that's what stoicism is but it's also about the space before we respond the consideration before we respond right the analysis the the the philosophy that goes into making sure that the response we're having is one we're going to be proud of, the one that's going to make the most sense, that's going to age the best.

21:33And so we have to see stillness as a discipline, just as working out is a discipline, just as pushing ourselves physically is a discipline. The ability to be calm and cool and collected under pressure, under stimulus, this is also a discipline. And it's a practice. And we have to build our lives and our programs around it. Part of this for me is I try to wake up very early. I think the mornings are a time for stillness. I think this is why coaches are so famous for trying to get to the facility first. There's less requests for meetings. The phones aren't ringing as much. We create space so we can think, so we can see big pictures, so we can not be responding, so we can have a little solitude.

22:14I know not everyone is a morning person. I do have a book recommendation if you struggle in the mornings. My kids like this one. Discipline in the morning is rooted in the discipline that we have in the evening. When the Stoics are talking about waking up at dawn, pushing yourself, they're not saying sacrifice sleep. They're saying you've got to be disciplined. You've got to take stuff out so you get to bed in time, sleep being such an important thing. This is Toni Morrison, the great writer. She was an editor as she was writing her first novel. And she would famously get up every morning. She said she had to make contact with the muses as she watched the dawn.

22:54She had to see the sun rising to do her best work. But she said she had to do her writing before she heard the word mom, right? She had to get it done in the morning. What's the space that you carve out to do your best thinking, your best planning, your prayer, your meditation, your workout, whatever it is you need to cultivate the mental stillness that you're going to need to draw on through the course of the day. Usually the morning is the best time for that. When you wake up and you're behind the eight ball, when you're scrambling, when you get sucked straight into things, that's also an attitude that you carry forward through the day.

23:28So I try to get up early and then I take my kids for a walk. That's my thing. We go outside and we go for a walk. It started with the single stroller and then the double stroller and now they're walking on their own. It was easier when I could strap them in and they couldn't resist. Now I have to come up with all sorts of incentives and bribes to get them to do it. But I can see in their behavior and I can see in my behavior and I can even see it in my creative output for the day when I skip this, when I don't have the discipline, right? It's reflected in the quality of the work. I try to do a little journaling in the morning.

24:00I try to create distance between me and my thoughts. I want to vomit my frustrations or fears or worries or insecurities out on the page instead of on the people that work for me or the people that live with me. And the page being a great way to do this, right? Paper being so much more patient than people. And then I go straight into my hardest writing task for the day. I want to cross that off again before the interruptions, before things can go wrong. And my other rule is I don't touch my phone. Really, I don't check my texts, social, or email for the first 30 minutes to one hour that I am awake.

24:37I don't want to start the day reactive. A great line I heard is that your inbox is a to-do list put together by other people. I have my to-do list that I want to tackle in the morning, which is family time, reflection time, thinking time, as opposed to this random request. hey, can you send me your address? Or hey, did you want this flight or that flight? Or hey, did you see this terrible news story about how the world is falling apart? Or this is really going to piss you off, right? A friend of mine was telling me is, you know, he wakes up early, he says, and then I check my email to see if there's any fires I have to put out.

25:13And I said, but you never don't find them, do you, right? If you wake up looking for stuff to get sucked into, that's what's going to happen. So I try to carve out this morning space. I try to keep distance from the apps. Here's a failed experiment from the Cardinals. Cell phone break. Every hour, the team got 15 minutes of cell phone breaks. That did not work out super well. We think we're good at multitasking of switching back. Oh, I checked this, then I'm back. No, the scientists show that there's a residue. It takes us a considerable amount of time to go from one task to the other to be fully locked in on that task.

25:49And so the fewer the interruptions, the more distance you have, the more locked in you have, the better your performance is going to be. When you look at your screen time, when it shows you how much time you spent on your phone, ask yourself, what could I have done with that time? Ask yourself, how is that fueling my ego? Who could I be if I was less tied to this thing, less sucked into this thing, and more present and focused with what's in front of me? I think the killer advantage in the information age, to go to Mattis' point, is uninterrupted focus. How good are you at concentrating? How locked in are you in a world where everyone else is distracted?

26:28Paradoxically, I think hobbies are a great way to do this. They allow you an escape, so then you can be locked in when you are doing what you're doing. Churchill famously has a nervous breakdown after the First World War, and he gets into painting. And he is not good at painting. You can see some of his paintings and you can see that it's not what he was doing for the painting, but what the painting was doing for him. It made him present. It gave him something to be joyful about. It forced him to go outside. It was also humbling, right? Like it's never as good as you want it to be. He actually writes a book called Painting as a Pastime.

27:07And he says, every public or important person should have one or two hobbies. And he says they have to be real. They have to get you to do something. And his other hobby was actually bricklaying. He would lay bricks on his estate in the morning. It was something he would do with his kids. And we can, again, imagine one of the most powerful, important, brilliant people in the world getting some therapy out of manual labor, right? So different than what he normally does. there's a scene where he's in the White House during the Second World War and he walks into the Oval Office and he finds FDR going through his stamp collection.

27:43And he would have understood this perfectly, that they both have these kind of silly, weird hobbies, but that it's a release valve for them. And if you're all about business, if you're so locked in what you're doing, you're not balancing yourself out, I think this is what leads to burnout and nervous breakdowns of these types. At the Casablanca conference, FDR is dragged by Churchill. They get in a car, they drive five hours to see a sunset in Marrakesh. Just imagine how stressful things are, and Churchill's painting this sunset. Chris Bosh in the off-season as a basketball player learns how to play guitar.

28:21He learns Spanish. He learns computer coding. He was just telling me now he's taking pottery classes. He's fallen in love with art for all the same reasons that Churchill did. It's so different than what he was so good at that it balances him out. For me, it's spending time on my farm. It's mostly fixing fences or tracking down animals or feeding animals. It's an endless amount of labor, but it's so different than what I do. It's humbling. I'm terrible at it. I'm having to always ask my neighbors for help. It gets me out of my head and forces me to focus on what I'm doing. This is my donkey buddy.

28:59I bought him on Craigslist for $100. But one of my best investments ever, because I've gotten so much stillness and focus and connection out of it, right? The ability to be present. That donkey is just standing there. He doesn't compare himself to the other donkeys. He doesn't wonder if he's reaching his potential or not. As long as he doesn't die, that's like a pretty good day for him, right? And the ability to be present, to be where you are is really the hardest thing. I would say one of the most incredible physical and intellectual feats of the last century is Marina Abramovich's The Artist is Present.

29:37She sat every day in a chair for three months, eight hours a day, doing nothing but staring directly at the person in front of her, and they would rotate. And it was such an overwhelming experience. These people would break down in tears. They would freeze. They were overwhelmed by the feeling of just actually being present with another person. She couldn't get up for bathroom breaks. She couldn't say anything. She couldn't move. She just had to actually just be in the moment. And you know when you're a moment. Like if I sat here and I said, let's just wait for one minute, as Mr. Rogers famously did on TV, and I just watched the second hands tick by, it would be the longest minute of your life.

30:20But that's what happens when we slow down and we lock in. When we say no to the things that keep us busy and distract us. This is a sign on my desk. That's a picture of Oliver Sacks. It just says no exclamation point. And below it and above it are pictures of my kids. A reminder that when I'm saying yes to things that I should be saying no to, I'm saying no to them. I have this little memo. This is a real memo from Truman's office. And it's him writing a note to his secretary. She's asking, should I say that because of so many similar requests, the president must be excused? And he writes, the proper response is underlined, HST.

30:59As he becomes more important, as more and more is on his desk, he has to say no to almost everything that comes in. This is an ideal day in my calendar. not because I'm not working but because I haven't agreed to any distractions or meetings or things that take me away from what I should be thinking about this is a great letter speaking of Eisenhower Evie White the writer was asked to join this presidential committee and he said I must decline for secret reasons you don't owe anyone an explanation you don't have to feel bad if you don't want to do it just say no right if you've got more important things to do if you have your main thing.

31:36This is the motto of the Rams. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing, right? And to say no to the things that are not the main thing, realizing that every yes is a no, every no is a yes. Most meetings could be Zooms. Most Zooms could be phone calls. Most phone calls could be emails. Most emails could be texts. Most things probably don't need to happen at all. Mark Stavridis would say the question to ask ourselves is, is this essential? He said, because most of what we do and say is not essential. And when we eliminate the inessential, he says we do the essential better. Family being essential, self-development being essential, your standards being essential, the big things being the essential, and we let the little things go.

32:18So that's what I have for today. The obstacle is the way. Ego is the enemy. Stillness is the key. And the reason we have to remember all of these principles is that, as I said, as long as you don't die. That's a pretty good day. Stokes would say, memento mori, life is very short. We don't know how long we're here. Mark Smith says, we could leave life right now, let that determine what we do and say and think. We could be good today. Instead, we choose tomorrow. We put it off. We don't balance the books of life each day. We don't live each day as a complete life. And then when we wake up, we take that day for granted.

32:55We're distracted. We waste it. We put things off. No, you could leave life right now, let that determine what you do and say and think. And so on that very morbid note, thank you all very much.

33:23Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Just a reminder, we've got signed copies of all my books in the Daily Stoic store. You can get them personalized. You can get them sent to a friend. The obstacle is the way you go is the enemy. Stillness is the key. The leather-bound edition of the Daily Stoic. We have them all in the Daily Stoic store, which you can check out at store.dailystoic.com.

34:00My family owns a 2023 Toyota 4Runner, and honestly, it's my favorite vehicle that I've ever owned. Around town, it's smooth and reliable, but where it really shines is on our trips into the backcountry. We've taken it on backpacking adventures to Colorado and New Mexico, loaded it up with gear, and never had to think twice about whether it could handle the terrain. That's what Toyota trucks are built for. Off-road confidence, rugged durability, and the freedom to explore. Toyota has a long history with the outdoor community, and they're committed to helping more people get out there and experience what nature has to offer.

34:30From remote trails to scenic byways, Toyota Trucks empowers you to take the detour, roam freely, and discover places that still feel wild and untouched. And they're not just making great trucks, they're working to expand access to adventure so more people can connect with the outdoors and pass that passion on to the next generation. Discover your uncharted territory. Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. That's toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist.

35:07That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in. It's a lot to keep something like the Daily Stoic going. So if you want to support a show but not listen to ads, well, we have partnered with Supercast to bring you a ad-free version of Daily Stoic. We're calling it Daily Stoic Premium. And with Premium, you can listen to every episode of the Daily Stoic podcast completely ad-free, no interruptions, just the ideas, just the messages, just the conversations you came here for.

35:50And you can also get early access to episodes before they're available to the public. And we're going to have a bunch of exclusive bonus content and extended interviews in there just for Daily Stoic Premium members as well. If you want to remove distractions, go deeper into Stoicism and support the work we do here. Well, it takes less than a minute to sign up for Daily Stoic Premium, and we are offering a limited time discount of 20 % off your first year. Just go to dailystoic.com slash premium to sign up right now or click the link in the show descriptions to make those ads go away.